Defining (and understanding) Dude Logic

If you've ever fallen butt first into one of these, Darwin definitely doesn't want you to procreate

While sitting in my bathroom the other day, reading Afrodisiac and snooping on my neighbors, I came to realize that there’s no other household appliance that serves as many essential roles as the toilet does. Seriously, think about it. Aside from the obvious, the toilet also serves as a library, a makeshift pew (I know I’m not the only one who’s often, um, “compelled” to speak to God while sitting there), a balance beam (Raise you hand if you depend on being able to place a foot on your toilet seat to help dry your legs off after taking a shower), a vacation (Raise yourhand if you’ve just sat on the toilet for a couple extra minutes just to take a break from everyone), and an amusement park for pets.

Most importantly, the toilet is also the relationship Rosetta Stone; the one place in the house that will allow you to fully understand the difference between chick logic — which we’ve already discussed — and dude logic.

Now, I imagine that many of you are surprised that I gave the logic of dudes its own separate distinction. I mean, according to practically every man who’s ever walked the Earth, there’s only two types of logic, chick logic — defined here as “women making decisions and taking actions based on what they’re feeling…then, after the fact, constructing a logic-pattern which fits the way they felt or acted” — and regular ole logic, right?

Well, while it’s true that dude logic is much, much, much, much, much closer to regular ole logic than chick logic is, dude logic is distinct enough to have its own definition as well.

Anyway, back to the toilet. Although it seems like it should be one of those things that happen in movies but never actually occur in real life, men and women really do get into arguments about the toilet seat. My parents did (and probably still do). Your parents did. I do, and you do too.

Chick logic comes into play when a woman is angered that a toliet seat is left up. How? Well, instead of just taking the 0.2 seconds it would take to put the toilet seat down, the open toilet becomes a symptom of everything that’s wrong with men in general and her relationship in particular. The toilet seat isn’t merely left up, her feelings are disregarded, her womanhood is disrespected, and her humanity is dismissed.

In fact, it’s bigger than her. It’s proof of patriarchy, male privilege, and the continued oppression of women, and being made to put the seat down herself represents how women are expected to be selfless and supportive at all times; the proverbial custom made man bra to Big Baby Davis’ boobs. Also, if you listen closely, you might hear her growl. But, the growl is really her saying “Grrragrala!” which is Swahili for “I AINT YO F*CKIN MULE, NO MO!!!”

If you’re a man who knows that his woman is going to be pissed about you leaving the toilet seat up, the perfectly logical thing to do is just make sure you put it down when you’re done peeing. But, since we rarely do the logical thing in this situation, dude logic is the only way to explain our behavior.

Now, a common misconception about men is that we’re generally thoughtless. Basically, the idea goes, we have a knack for just doing things without really considering the consequences, and us leaving the toilet seat up is proof that we only think about ourselves and the moment. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Men are always assessing, processing, determining, gauging, and estimating. It’s just that we (generally) value the (occasional) happiness that comes from taking risks more than we fear the possible negative consequences.

I’m bringing this up because us leaving the toilet seat up is a perfect example of this way of thinking. It’s not that we don’t know that it’ll upset you. It’s not even that we’re not considerate of your feelings. We leave the seat up because we think it’s stupid that you get so worked up about it, and we don’t think you should care about it. So although we don’t leave it up on purpose, remembering to put the seat down never becomes a priority because we hope that you’ll eventually come around to our way of thinking.

That, in its purest essence, is dude logic. We have a tendency to so staunchly believe that we’re doing/saying/thinking the right thing — and that you’ll be better once you realize it — that we’ll risk having a pointless and completely avoidable argument for the chance that you’ll finally have an epiphany and realize that it (and by “it” I mean “every f*cking thing”) aint that serious. Basically, while chick logic can be summarized as women wanting us to care about complete and utter nonsense, dude logic is us wanting you do care about nothing at all.

(And yes, this dude/”not wanting you to care about anything” logic is practiced by the same people who care so much about The Wire that they’ll spend 9 consecutive hours arguing with a nameless person on a message board — an argument where articles, essays, quotes, graphs, and spreadsheets are cited — because they had the audacity to say that season 3 was better than season 4. Am I one of these people? No comment.)

Anyway, neither dude logic nor chick logic is perfectly logical. (although, again, dude logic comes much closer) I guess we should try to be, but where’s the fun in that?